Off to the Garden of Eden

Photo Courtesy of JayManCan aka JayManGrow (Wikimedia Commons)

Adam and Eve were the original world naked gardeners, so why not follow their example?

In large parts of the world, spring is about to erupt. Even Britain is predicting 27 degrees this weekend, Taiwan is heading across the 30 degrees, and countries which are leaving summer behind hopefully still enjoy an autumn balmy enough for some nude sprucing.

The eternal problem of course is what kind of garden people have. I myself don't have a garden worth that name. Living high up in a building, there are plants on the floors of the balconies. I might venture out there in my natural state, but it won't take long before either the neighbors or the police who are regulating traffic several floors lower might get an eyeful of what I'm up to.

I  used to live in the countryside, which was much more friendly to naked gardening, at least from the size and vision angles. The garden was huge, and a considerable part of it was lined by walls of 2 meters and higher, not allowing any neighbors or passersby to see what was going on inside.

That of course is the ideal place to spend the first Saturday of each May, World Naked Gardening Day. You don't have to worry about any non-naturist or sensitive neighbors or passersby, you just do your thing, and not just on May 5 this year, but every warm day.

I'll probably never again own a patch of garden where I can enjoy truly 100 percent naked gardening, though I've always dreamed of living in a totally naturist community, where I never have to wear any clothes any day, except when it's too cold, but then, I would pick a spot in a warmer climate anyway.

To all those lucky enough or brave enough to spend a true World Naked Gardening Day, my best wishes. If you're not gardening and happen to be in Paris, with tickets already booked, this Saturday also marks the naked tour of the Palais de Tokyo Museum.

www.wngd.org

http://www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/2932703/palais-de-tokyos-exhibition-flaunts-a-naked-day-pleasing



Out in the garden

It's the first Saturday of May ... meaning it's also World Naked Gardening Day.
While I grew up in the countryside in an old house with a literally huge garden, I somehow never caught the gardening microbe.
Yes, I went into the garden to play hide-and-seek, to sit in the sunshine and read a book, to set up an Indian tent, to play with the cats, to pick strawberries and other berries whose English name I don't really know, but neither gardening nor naturism were ever an option.
I discovered naturism by traveling overseas, first of all to Croatia - which was then still known as Yugoslavia - and later to Sweden and the United States. Santa Barbara, California, had a stretch of ocean beach where nude bathing was allowed, but when I visited years later, it had disappeared.
Back to gardening: I chose to live in a densely populated urban society in Asia, where gardens are an unheard-of luxury.
Some people put pots of flowers on the top of their high-rise apartment tower, up on the 11th or the 24th or the 30th floor, or find a place for a potted plant inside their apartment, but that's about it. When you have 23 million people crammed in a space the size of the Netherlands, and half of it is occupied by tall mountains where nobody can or wants to live, it's easy to understand why housing prices in the cities are so high, and why most people can't afford to buy the European-style house with a garden.
But I still have a garden, only it's not a naturist-friendly one.
Back in Europe, there were lots of walls and trees which could have theoretically been useful if I had been able otherwise - read: if my relatives had been naturists too - to want to use parts of the garden for naturism.
But here in Taiwan, my 'garden' is a narrow balcony with almost top-to-bottom windows. If I stand naked in that 'garden,' people down in the street outside, including the police officers directing traffic during rush hour, will be able to witness my naturist endeavors.
So all I can do is pop over naked in the morning to open the windows up to morning air, and to pop back inside quickly - or take a picture first, as I did yesterday morning, in preparation for this blog post to mark World Naked Gardening Day.
With this, I wish everybody who does have a real garden or at least a patch of green where he or she can live as a naturist, even if it is only for a brief time, a productive day.
If you google the term World Naked Gardening Day, you are going to find lots of articles today. The main website of course is http://www.wngd.org

The Garden of Eden

Today, May 7, 2016, is World Naked Gardening Day.
Why? Because the first Saturday of May has the ring of spring to it, at least in most of the Northern Hemisphere. I imagine even fellow naturists in the Southern Hemisphere can still venture outside in the nude today and take care of their bushes and trees.
I often use the formula #thingstodointhenude on Twitter to promote things you can do in the nude, and as the organizers of the World Naked Gardening Day say, gardening is the second-best naturist activity after swimming.
When the sun is out, there's nothing better than communing with nature in the way God created you. You can have your own Garden of Eden.
Or in my case, a microgarden of Eden.
As you can see in the picture, my garden is no bigger than a sixpack. It's set on a low wooden chair on my balcony - which gives me a grand view of the river and the six-lane road beside it, but unfortunately, that also works the opposite way.
The busy intersection below is often manned by police, as it is today, a sunny 33-degree weekend day, when thousands of drivers, but also motorcyclists and cyclists, head out of the capital Taipei toward the closest coastal town.
So my nude gardening is hardly nude and barely gardening, but I'm sure thousands, no, millions of people live in conditions better 'suited' for naturist plantwork.
Back in Europe, I used to live in a house with a huge enclosed garden. Walking around naked was still difficult, because in some spots, different neighbors might see you from their upper-floor windows, and of course, you could never tell whether they were home or not, and on which floor they were.
My dream, as any naturist's dream, would be to live in an environment where it doesn't matter whether you're nude or not. The weather would be the only force dictating whether you should be wearing anything at all, and gardening could be naked all year round, in any place, at home, behind the house or in front, alone or in full view.
For those who have already realized that dream, every day will be World Naked Gardening Day.
http://wngd.org/